The inbox is filling up with offers from hotel loyalty programs lately. Double points, big bonuses, tie-ins with airlines… it’s a whole lotta points being offered to try to draw in guests.
The bonuses can be big. The biggest: up to 25,000 Marriott points; up to 30,000 InterContinental PriorityClub award points; and 20,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points.
I love bonuses — don’t get me wrong — but this spate of extra point opportunities reminds me of the big awards that the airlines were offering in 2004 and 2005. (Take, for example, the ~50,000 bonus miles I earned in 2005 for taking four flights to Washington, DC.) The flood of points was followed a few years later with award devaluation. An oversupply of points contributed to the rising “prices” for awards.
So when I see big awards like this, from multiple hotel brands, at once, I worry that a round of devaluation of hotel awards is coming. It’s a classic inflationary scenario: The supply of currency expands, followed by prices. So cash in those points sooner rather than later.
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January 22nd, 2009 at 1:01 pm
You may have a point, but Marriott has been running those megabonus promotions at least once a year for as long as I’ve been a member (~5 years), so I wouldn’t read anything into that.
January 22nd, 2009 at 2:02 pm
any indication that it will be easier to use the accumulated points? Seems like the airlines did this a while back, but then it became so difficult to redeem the points for flights. What use is more points if you cannot redeem them?
January 22nd, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Look at Marriott though. I’ve been with them for years. About 6 months ago, it became VERY difficult to cash in rewards for anything under 25k/night. Unless you were in the boonies. I’ve since switched to Starwood.
January 23rd, 2009 at 2:12 am
I love that image of the 500 million dollar note from Zimbabwe. I guess the rocks are meant to represent the former Great Zimbabwe, ana amazing city of stone:
http://canyon.nationalgeographic.com/history/ancient/photo/great-enclosure.html
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:27 am
I agree with the points devaluation in hotel loyalty programs coming.
I disagree that these are big points promotions we are seeing currently are an indicator of an impending points devaluation.
In my opinion, the major hotel chains pulled back on the lucrative promotions for Winter 2009. They just happen to be marketing them more or perhaps people are paying more attention to the promotions now as the economy is down.
I thought last summer had better hotel loyalty program offers than the current batch.
Charging more points for hotel rooms with a rewards restructuring seems to be the inherent inflation factor the programs incorporate in their redemption rewards.
February 4th, 2009 at 8:29 am
[...] now Your hotel points are safe, they say. Adam Kirby at the trade journal Hotels followed up on my speculation (or “paranoia”) that recent hotel bonus promotions were the sign of devaluations to [...]
November 12th, 2009 at 9:43 am
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